From the White House – Weekly Address
President Obama tells the American people about his speech at Knox College on Wednesday, where he discussed the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class, including having a good job, a home that is your own, quality education, a secure retirement, and affordable health care.
From the White House – Weekly Address
In this week’s address, President Obama discusses the Senate’s confirmation of Rich Cordray as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB is an independent watchdog set up to protect families from irresponsible behavior in the financial sector – one that puts mortgage lenders, student lenders, payday lenders, and credit reporting and debt collection agencies under greater scrutiny, while providing the American people a place to get some measure of justice if they don’t play by the rules.
From the White House – Weekly Address
President Obama discusses how a large, bipartisan majority in the Senate voted to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which would add a big boost to our economy, strengthen Social Security, and modernize our legal immigration system to make it more consistent with our value. He calls on Congress to pass this commonsense bill quickly so that we can fix our broken immigration system and keep America strong for years to come.
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Obama administration will no longer defend DOMA
and this >>>>>>
Obama Chooses Sotomayor for Supreme Court Nominee
and this >>>>>>
President Obama Nominates Elena Kagan for Supreme Court
has led to this >>>>>
Supreme Court strikes down Defense of Marriage Act.
In a speech that was highly praised by those who saw it, President Obama presented a sweeping policy vision to combat climate change and provide for our energy future.
Unfortunately, the cable networks apparently had bigger fish to fry. MSNBC devoted a total of 41 seconds to the speech, Fox news 4:37 and CNN 8:05. Only the Weather Channel and CSPAN3 covered the entire speech.
The President opened by presenting the reality of climate change, stressing that there was no room for question about humankind’s impact on our climate.
The 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15 years. Last year, temperatures in some areas of the ocean reached record highs, and ice in the Arctic shrank to its smallest size on record – faster than most models had predicted it would. These are facts.
Now, we know that no single weather event is caused solely by climate change. Droughts and fires and floods, they go back to ancient times. But we also know that in a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by a warming planet. The fact that sea level in New York, in New York Harbor, are now a foot higher than a century ago – that didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy, but it certainly contributed to the destruction that left large parts of our mightiest city dark and underwater.
The potential impacts go beyond rising sea levels. Here at home, 2012 was the warmest year in our history. Midwest farms were parched by the worst drought since the Dust Bowl, and then drenched by the wettest spring on record. Western wildfires scorched an area larger than the state of Maryland. Just last week, a heat wave in Alaska shot temperatures into the 90s.
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Farmers see crops wilted one year, washed away the next; and the higher food prices get passed on to you, the American consumer. Mountain communities worry about what smaller snowpacks will mean for tourism – and then, families at the bottom of the mountains wonder what it will mean for their drinking water. Americans across the country are already paying the price of inaction in insurance premiums, state and local taxes, and the costs of rebuilding and disaster relief.
So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science – of chemistry and physics and millions of measurements – has put all that to rest. Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data, have now put that to rest. They’ve acknowledged the planet is warming and human activity is contributing to it.
So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren.
As a President, as a father, and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act. (Applause.)
From the White House – Weekly Address
President Obama discusses the bipartisan legislation in the United States Senate that would take important steps towards fixing our broken immigration system, while growing our economy and reducing the deficit.
From the White House – Weekly Address
In this week’s address, President Obama says that the United States Senate will soon take action to fix our broken immigration system with a commonsense bill, and urges lawmakers to act quickly to pass this bill so that we can continue to live up to our traditions as a nation of laws, and also a nation of immigrants.
From the White House – Weekly Address
In this week’s address, President Obama says that the economy is moving in the right direction, but there is still more work to do. He calls on Congress to act to give every responsible homeowner the chance to save money on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low interest rates, put more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and fix our broken immigration system, so that we can continue to grow our economy and create good middle class jobs.
From the White House – Weekly Address
In this week’s address, President Obama commemorates Memorial Day by paying tribute to the men and women in uniform who have given their lives in service to our country.
On Memorial Day, we honor and remember the men and women who gave their lives in service of our country. And while our commitment to those who serve and their families remains important every day, Memorial Day is the perfect time to offer a simple act of kindness to our veterans and military families. You can send a message of thanks to our troops or a military family. Or pledge hours of service.